How they respond will say much about their commitment to winter naps, and about the deep interconnections between climate and animal behavior.īears take an approach to hibernation that’s far different from other slumberers’.
A better understanding of the process could potentially change our approach to a wide range of human conditions, including stroke, osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, and Alzheimer’s.īears, too, will have to rethink their concept of hibernation as the climate warms and winters grow shorter. “Hibernation is so complex, it requires adaptations at multiple levels,” she says.īear hibernation offers important insights into the workings of large mammals, especially us, explains Gracheva, who co-authored an exploration of the physiology of hibernation in the 2020 Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology. The choreography that goes into shutting down a creature this big defies easy explanation, says Elena Gracheva, a neurophysiologist at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. Adult grizzly and black bears outweigh even the largest American football players, and have the energy and curiosity of preschoolers, but they have no trouble hunkering down for months at a time. The roster of animals that hibernate includes all manner of rodents, some amphibians, and even a few primates (several species of dwarf lemurs), but bears are literally the biggest hibernators of them all. It’s tempting to say that they are “waking up,” but hibernation is more complicated and mysterious than a simple long sleep: Any animal that can spend months underground without eating or drinking and still emerge ready to face the world has clearly mastered an amazing trick of biology.
Įvery spring, as days in the north stretch longer and melting snow trickles into streams, drowsy animals ranging from grizzlies to ground squirrels start to rally from hibernation. This article was originally published by Knowable Magazine.